


Never Let Me Go

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Melancholy, Romance, Scully headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 08:39:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16193990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Where Scully's head is at, season by season





	Never Let Me Go

1.

 

She feels as though she’s flailing when her father dies.  It feels like chaos, both inside her head and in her bones.  She’s never felt chaos before. She’s always felt structure and order.  Structure and order feel safe.

 

When Mulder touches her cheek in sympathy, a part of her would like to lean into the comfort he’s offering, but she doesn’t.  For those few seconds though, the noise that’s been filling all her empty spaces goes quiet.

 

Later, when she visits Mulder in the hospital, after he takes a bullet for her carelessness, she sits beside him on the bed and hates herself a little for wanting to lay down beside him in the hopes of a little peace and quiet.

 

2.

 

She doesn’t need a psychologist to tell her she’s been suppressing her feelings.  Maybe she’d never have been able to call it PTSD, but she knows there’s been anxiety simmering.  She can feel it crawling under her skin, bubbling in the pit of her stomach, fluttering in her heart.

 

Donnie Pfaster is not Duane Barry, but she can’t tell that there’s difference when she looks at him.  Abductors and killers. Two men, one demon.

 

When it’s over, Mulder’s fingertips brush the underside of her chin and she swears they whisper ‘you’re safe’ against her skin.  The fear she’s been holding back finally explodes out of her and she hides from it in Mulder’s arms. It’s just for a few moments, just until she stops trembling, but not before she realizes with embarrassment that she was the one that reached out for him, almost as though it were instinctual.

 

3.

 

She thinks she may know how her mother used to feel when she sent her father off to sea, not knowing if it would be the last time she saw him or not.  Mulder is trying to add levity to the moment, as though he’s not about to head into battle with a man that can inflict his will upon anyone he crosses paths with.  She touches his hands and his fingers slip away from her, leaving his gun behind. She wants to slide to her knees in front of him and ask him to just put his arms around her once, before he goes.

 

After their forced game of Russian roulette, after Modell is left clinging to life support, she twists her fingers into his and feels like a coward for not being able to offer him the solace that he would.  It’s all that she can do though, all that she can offer.

 

4.

 

She knows it’s selfish of her, but the longing to embrace him is always stronger when he’s suffering.  No, not to embrace him, but to be embraced  _ by _ him.  Some twisted logic in her brain makes her think that she can keep his head above water if he holds onto her, and not the other way around.

 

But, when he writhes on the ground from the torment in his head, when his mother’s slap echoes off the walls, when he holds a gun to his own temple, it’s the first time she ever thinks about putting her arms all the way around him for his sake and not her own.

 

5.

 

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  If a mother loses a daughter, but she never knew the daughter existed, does that make her a mother?

 

She can feel him behind her, feel his heat and the phantom pressure of his hands on her shoulders.  It’s the first time she’s ever wanted to tell him not to touch her.

 

6.

 

Her emotions have spent the year on a pendulum, swinging one way, and then another.  She’s been so angry with him to the point of almost walking away, but she’s also been closer to him than she’s ever felt before.  She’s been on the verge of kissing him and she’s been on the verge of hitting him. 

 

She knows that he must know she’s played her share of baseball, but neither of them feel the need to admit that to each other.  She knows it’s an excuse, and she knows he probably knows she knows it’s an excuse. Honestly, she doesn’t care. It’s the first time he’s ever had his arms around her for no reason at all, unless you call hitting a baseball a reason, and it feels wonderful.

 

Maybe one day she’ll just be able to ask him to play ball with her again, but then he’d probably know it was an excuse and it’s okay for him, but not for her.

 

7.

 

She feels awful that Mulder is hurting over the loss of his mother, but she isn’t sorry that the woman is dead.  

 

Sometimes she hates him for how easy it is for him to reach for her when he needs to.  He doesn’t seem to worry about propriety or weakness. And she doesn’t know why, after all this time, it matters to her, but it does.  She doesn’t think less of him for his need, and he wouldn’t either, but still.

 

She knows she should feel guilty for this terrible reason that gives her an opportunity to press her lips to his neck and to run her fingers through his hair, but she doesn’t.  She doesn’t because his hold on her is so tight, almost crushing, and she tells herself that it’s what he needs and she can give it to him, even if she would have a hard time accepting it herself.

 

8.

 

Was it only a few days ago that she was lying in his arms, in his bed, watching shadows move across the ceiling?  Because it feels like a million years away.

 

If only she’d gotten sick just a little sooner.  If only she’d taken her skipped period a little more seriously.  If only she’d been able to tell him about the baby before he’d left for Oregon.  Maybe he would’ve stayed. Maybe not.

 

She’ll find him, and when she does, she’ll put her arms around him and she’ll take his hand and she’ll place it low on her belly and tell him about the miracle he said not to give up on.

 

9.

 

He holds her tight and she holds him tighter.  She wants to stay that way, locked up tight, but there’s no time.  He may never want to hold her like this again when he learns what she’s done.

 

_ I want to come home.  To you, and to William. _

 

She tightens her grip and basks in the fleeting moments of security that only his arms have ever been able to provide her.

 

10.

 

She remembers once upon a time that her sister had been broken up with by a boyfriend whose name is irrelevant.  The relationship had only been weeks old, but Melissa took it hard, as she was prone to do, being both sensitive and emotionally volatile.  The guy had tried to get back together with her a short time later, but Melissa slammed the door in the woebegone suitor’s face, screaming at him that she didn’t care if he didn’t know what he had until he lost it, he should’ve thought of that before.

 

She knows what she has with Mulder, but it doesn’t stop her.  Like Melissa, Mulder is sensitive and emotionally volatile. Unlike Melissa, if Scully leaves him a thousand times, he will take her back a thousand and one.  

 

It’s a can’t live with him, can’t live without him cliche.  She leaves when the isolation becomes claustrophobic, and comes back when the loneliness becomes unbearable.  He welcomes her back without a word and inevitably lets her go with heavy silence.

 

11.

 

“Can you hold me?” she asks.

 

There’s a look of surprise on his face that he tries to hide.  Of course he’s surprised, in 25 years, she’s never asked, never made it so blatantly obvious she needs to be held.

 

“I can do that,” he answers, drawing back the sheets.

 

She’s been thinking about time lately.  How much of it is left, how much of it has been wasted.  If she’s lucky, she has maybe 30, 35 years left, but who really knows?  Time is fleeting and precious and if she doesn’t start spending it doing things she  _ wants _ to do, what has she really been doing with her life?

 

What she wants is to stop being so afraid of the love she has for the man that’s proven his own love and loyalty for her too often for anyone to ever have to.  She wants to be able to state, with no qualms or hesitations, that she will come back, and she will stay, and she will be more open and honest with him than she ever has.

 

She can’t change overnight though.  Asking him to hold her wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be, but it wasn’t easy either.

 

Three months later, when they return to their little house, shaky, weepy, damp, and devastated, she shows him the test results for what she’d both hoped and feared for in all the years they’ve been together.  She had a hard time believing it 17 years ago and she has a hard time believing it now.

 

“Will you hold me?” she asks.

 

He lets the paper in his hand drift to the floor and wraps his arms around her.  She hides her face in his chest.

 

“Never let me go,” she whispers.

 

“Never,” he says.

 

The End

 


End file.
